said, "after a while it just seemed like everyone was thinking about who was going to play them in the next version of "game change," which is the campaign book that was written by mark halperin and john heilemann about the 2008 campaign, best-seller. and again, that sort of goes to the larger cinematic sense that people have with themselves here. there's this sense of preening, a sense of, "who's going to play me in the movie? will i get a cameo playing myself in the movie?" as people in the "game change" movie did. that's another scene in here. and again, it's a sort of blame -- it's a sort of blurring of the larger class of fame, of really the ruling class in the public perception game. that i think is as much a part of this decadence as really anything else. >> i was surprised when i read the book, because i have followed your reporting. and you were reporting good stories, anecdotal stories, and fact-driven stories. but they didn't seem to have the narrative arc that emerges in this. was that something you came to in the course of writing it or in the course of reporting? how did that